kareina: (Default)
When last I posted we'd sent laurel candidate number four (Erminegard) on vigil at Doube Wars, but the court for her elevation hadn't happened yet. It happened, it was another good ceremony, with many kind words spoken. It was the last court of the event, so it include other highlights, including the reading aloud of a story that the children on site had written together, using the help of dice, over the course of the event. This story will be published in English in Dragon's tale, and translations of it are planned to appear in some of the other newsletters, as appropriate.

Saturday was a start breaking camp day, so we spent much of the day packing and organizing stuff so that the things that we would need accessible for the drive would be so, and the things we wouldn't need again were ready to just load the next morning. Then we enjoyed the evening hanging out with people, soaking in the hot tub, and got to bed just after midnight.

We woke at 07:00, and managed to get the car loaded and us off site by 12:00, which was the published "site closes" time. The process took a little longer than usual because of the little green bugs, which had been all over everything for much of the event. They seemed to like to perch on the tent, especially on the peak of the roof. Then they died there, and more of them landed on the bodies. Or, perhaps, others landed on them whilst they were still alive, and the weight killed them? Whatever the reason, when we took down the tent it was covered in little green bugs, in places quite thickly, and the thickest at the peak, were it was more than 1 cm thick with little green bugs, most of which made no attempt to get away from the little hand-held broom/soft bristle brush I used to clean them off the tent, which is why I suspect that lots of them were dead before I dropped the tent. Ewww. Have I mentioned that I have only one phobia? Dead bugs, especially squished ones. I have never seen such a phenomena before, and I hope I never do again. Once was three times too many.

Have I mentioned that I hate ticks and little green bugs that coat pavilions? There are very few things in this world that I feel so strongly negatively about to use the word "hate", but these two, yup, this time, that's the right word. Other than that, I really recommend the event, and the little green bugs haven't attended in previous years, so hopefully won't come back next year.

We drove 12 hours on Sunday, with stops for adventure at Forsviksbruk, the location that appears in Jan Guillou's novels about Arn and the history of Sweden in the early middle ages--it is the place wherein Arn built some water-mill powered stuff. The real place also had lots of water mills doing things like driving hammers in the smithy, etc, in use right up through the 1800's. These days it is a tourist attraction, and a nice place to stop.

During that drive animal siting log read:

3 rovfågel
1 rovfågel
1 rovfågel
2 rovfågel
1 rovfågel
1 rovfågel
1 falk
14 dovhjort
1 kronhjort
(Forsviksbruk)
1 rådjur
2 rådjur
1 duvhök

Then we arrived at Tönnebro, where we slept for three hours, then I woke up enough to drive, and he slept in the passenger seat for another hour or two before he woke and took back the wheel.

Monday was a 9 hour trip, including stopping at Skulleberget to climb to the cave, so we were home at 13:20, which gave us time to unload everything and put a fair bit of it away before we drove up to Skelleftehamn to his dad's house, where the cats had been staying while we were gone.

We then spent the rest of the week there, so that he could work in the workshop on various projects for 30 year and not have to drive a half an hour afterwards (which, over the course of three days adds up to three extra hours available for projects), and I used the time to focus on my thesis work, jumping into writing chapter 3 from the notes I had made on artefacts back in 2018 when I first started the project.

I did take a break during the day on Wednesday to go pick up my new fighting glasses (safety glasses, which will also be nice to have in the workshop) and get the photo taken for my new driver's licence, since it will expire this summer.

Friday after work we brought the cats and ourselves home again, and we were all happy. Saturday was mostly putting away what we'd taken with us to his dad's, and I worked on both my thesis and then epub version of the Drachenwald Songbook for 30 year as I attended the Wake for Paul de Gorey, where I enjoyed listing to stories about a nice man I had met only a couple of times, but found instantly likeable and a pleasure to meet. Keldor spent a bit of time in the workshop working on projects.

Sunday was more cleaning and organizing, and lots of cooking (so nice to have my own kitchen and pantry back), and we got a houseguest in the evening. A relative of one of my SCA friends down south was hired for a job in Kiruna, and was driving north to start the job. It is a long enough trip that he wanted to break it into two days, so my friend asked if he could stay with us. Of course he could. So we spent a couple of hours chatting with him, as I made sewing progress on my latest project--altering a pair of trousers that I found at Keldor's house. The trousers had once belonged to his mother, and so were much too big around the waist for me, but the length was good, other than the waist to crotch measurement, which was long enough to pull up to my natural waist either in front, or in back, but not both at once.

So I took of the waistband of the trousers, removed a triangle of fabric at each hip, sewed them together to make a diamond, and then inserted that into the crotch. Then I sewed shut the sides, and also took a small triangle fold at the center back of the waist, and I am now more than halfway done re-attaching the waistband (which, thanks to a funny coincidence, has the belt loops still falling symmetrically on either side of my tummy). It will be nice to get these done--they are lightweight, and a light grey colour, so won't be as much of a problem in the sun as my dark jeans will be.

Today was more thesis work for me, plus work advertizing the songbook--we just realized that it would make sense to have a google form for people to do their pre-ordering, rather than trying to count the comments on FB, so I created one, and it is already up to 36 responses. The form will be open through to midnight on 6 June, so people have only a week to order before we stop counting and do the printing. Ideally we should have given them more time for pre-ordering, but none of us thought of it till today.

I also sent an email to Reengarda's usual event site to see if it is available this autumn for the Norrskensbard event. This is the first time I have tried dealing with this site myself instead of just asking the exchequer to book it for me.
kareina: (Default)
Given that our shire hosted Drachenwald's Coronation in January, none of us felt up to also running our normal annual spring event JMB (short for Jungfru Maria Bebådelsedagsgille, which google translates as "Virgin Mary Annunciation Day party"), which typically has 20 to 40 people spending the full weekend at a site a half hour or so inland. But neither did we want to do nothing at all, so Keldor suggested that we do a JMB lite event here at our house, and created a FB event for, it and we even dropped it on the Kingdom Calendar, on the off chance that anyone who isn't on FB might go looking to see if we are doing something.

Between deciding to do that and now I got that tuition bill from the university, which, even though we worked out that I am correct, I do, in fact, have till the end of spring term before my funding runs out, nonetheless put me into panic thesis mode, trying to finish all of my data processing and write all the words for the thesis as fast as possible, so that I don't have to pay £2,500 a term (which, given I have no income just now, is not something I wish to do). Due to the limited amount of funded time available my thesis advisor and I agreed that, rather than doing the degree as the PhD we had originally planned, I should just down-grade to a Master's, which is a more easily achievable thesis format in a short time.

Then I saw that ad for funding, aimed at supporting two individuals who are in their final, otherwise unfunded, year of writing up their PhD results, and I dared to start dreaming again. An entire year to finish up converting all of data to a thesis would make it possible to get that second PhD after all, and would be fun, and, I think, my contribution to the science is worth the higher degree.

The funding application is straight forward: turn in a 2 page CV, a 500-word Thesis Summary, a 750 word General Interest Pitch, and... a three-minute video introducing myself and my research.

I have never edited a video in my life, and have almost never filmed video, so why not try? (I have filmed some acroyoga training, as it is a good way to look at what we are doing, and figure out what is going wrong and what we need to do different to make the pose work, and, when it does work, it is fun to have a record of it.)

Yannick of Normandy, in Insulae Draconis (he who did the wonderful trailers for Drachenwald's On-line Kingdom University Event), was kind enough to give me a two hour zoom call wherein he taught me the basics in using Lightworks, by having me edit together a couple of random segments of two of my acroyoga films, so that I could learn how to add film clips to a project, how to move them, how to select a subset of them, and discard the rest, how to overlay one over the other, with a dissolve transition from one to the next, and how to zoom and pan, and how to add a title. The result was a very short film using all of those skills, but, because it was randomly chosen bits, wasn't worth keeping.

Then I went to Luleå for my last week of work, working long days, so I practiced none of those skills directly after learning them. On my bus ride home, after doing filming of me in front of a greenscreen talking of my thesis reading a script, talking of it without a script, and even reading both the Thesis Summary and the General Interest Pitch (which gave me 45 minutes worth of film, in which I hope I have enough for the three minute film), I started thinking of the whole pan and zoom thing Yannick taught me.

I had always assumed that the panning and zooming in the yoga app videos was done by moving the camera, but, now that I have learned the skill, I understand that it is probably just video editing. However, I felt that this tool much be good to call attention to specific details in graphs or maps in my research. Then I suddenly felt inspired: GoogleEarth! That program has wonderful fly-in to your chosen location feature. But how to get that from that program into the video editing program? So I asked google, and sure enough, there are tutorials to do just that, and, it turns out, I didn't even need to use a third-party software for the screen recording, Windows has a built-in low end model, that works well enough, if you are willing to use the editor's zoom into the part of the screen you want, rather than selecting that portion before recording.

What does all this have to do with the mini SCA event at our house, you ask? Well, I got home late Thursday evening (where "home" = Keldor's dad's house in Skelleftehamn, since that is MUCH closer to the bus stop than our place is). Friday Keldor went to work, and I set to work transcribing all of my films I had made the day before, including noting where I stuttered, and if I added hand gestures, so that when I get to the part where I add me to the film, I can quickly grab the correct film to pull the words I need from. (In an ideal world I would have had a complete film plan and script done in advance, so I could have just recorded the words that would be used, in several takes, rather than needing to also record lots of additional stuff, as I just don't know yet exactly where the film is going. Apparently, I grow film projects in the same, barely planned organic way I approach most of my sewing and embroidery projects, with a strong "I will figure it out as I go" component).

I got all but one of them transcribed before he finished work for the day, and we packed up the cats and did the 35 minute drive home and got everything unpacked and put away. Then I settled to the computer with that final transcription, till time for the zoom meeting for the Drachenwald 30 Year songbook project, where I confessed that I had accomplished nothing for the project since our last meeting, due to thesis focus mode, and we delegated parts of the things I had hoped to do to others (thanks others!). As I listened to the meeting, I went to the web page where they are collecting the bits that are done, and tested pulling the list into Scrivener, copying in the plain lyrics, and adding clickable links to the various versions of each song (phf, sheet music, with chords, midi) where they exist. The meeting lasted long enough I got as far as the Ms. Then, as the meeting wrapped up, I exported the result to an epub, and sent it to the others, wondering if they think it is worth also doing an epub version of the song book. Then, at events with poor internet access one could still have the songbook in a format that is easy to read on a phone or a tablet, and, if the access is good, one could click through to the web page.

I have been wanting an epub songbook for ages, and haven't taken the time to sit down and do it. It really isn't hard to do, and would be fairly fast to just drop the old word doc for the Oerthan songbook into scrivener and convert it. It is just finding the time. The only reason doing the Drachwneald 30 Year songbook takes longer is the part about coping in the links to the other version. No one has replied to that shared file yet, so I have no idea if it is only me who likes the idea of epub, or if the idea is worth pursuing.

After the meeting I finished my transcription and got ready for bed, glad that we didn't have a normal JMB, as I would have missed all of the Friday night part of the event for work. The event announcement Keldor had done said that the event would start at 10:00 on Saturday, by which time I was sitting at the computer, happily experimenting with recording GoogleEarth fly-in to a quarry location, and fading from there to a photo of the rock from the quarry, fading to a photo of the crystal from the rock that I analysed, fading to the maps for each of the interesting elements for that crystal, one at a time (gee, it is GREAT to see the maps replacing one another like that--one very clearly sees the difference in distribution of each element!!!!).

As a result, when the first guests arrived, I don't know how much time later, I waved hello from the computer, and kept woking. A while later I was hungry, so I went out, chatted briefly with the first two visitors, accompanied them and Keldor on a tour of the house, ate some lunch, and went straight back to the computer to work.

At 15:00, I finished my first short sample film clip, which you can see on google drive here, or on FB here. So I put on some SCA garb, my hearing aids, and went out to the kitchen to discover that a number of others had arrived, so I shared with them my short film, had some dinner, during which I took of the dress I had put on, because it was too warm, and just the linen undertunic, to which I added my cotton flannel Thorsberg trousers, was more comfortable.

But as soon as I had finished eating, I returned to the computer to see how much time film # 2 would take, now that I know how to do it. That first film took five hours, the second, which you can see on google drive here (or on the same fb link, since I just edited the first post to add the next), took only 3, so clearly I am getting faster. Now I wonder how I can automate this? It must be possible to set up a template, and just drop in the sample photos and stuff from a folder, so that every sample has the exact same approach, making it easier to play the films side by side and see the differences.

When I came back out to the kitchen it was full! Well, ok, there were only 9 people, including me, and two dogs (our cats declined to join the party, but stayed hidden in the bedroom), but the kitchen is small, making it seem like a larger event than it really was. I hung out with them, and then gave Helena a tour of the house, then Lena and I did some yoga in the living room, and there was more hanging out and swapping stories.

Then I felt inspired to finally cut the fabric for a much lighter weight pair of Thorsberg trousers. I have a really light weight white cotton fabric, with a blue print that looks rather 12th Century in motief, that we found at a second hand store ages ago, and I thought at the time it would make some lovely Thorsberg trousers for wearing under a split-skirt bliaut, but I hadn't gotten around to doing anything with it. Because the fabric is so thin I wanted to line at least the square but panel and crotch rectangle with another fabric, but I didn't have anything in my stash that was an appropriate weight. So I looked in the mending pile, and saw an old light weight black cotton skirt that has been languishing waiting for someone to sew shut the rip in the fabric for ages, and saw that it was exactly the same weight as the blue printed white cotton fabric. Having survived for months without the skirt, I decided that it would make a great lining, so, since the party was just in the kitchen at that time, I claimed the living room floor for fabric cutting (and was able to cut out all the pieces without help from the cats, who were still keeping to the bedroom for reasons of people, and probably especially, dogs, in the house).

I got the pieces cut, and, since the fabric piece wasn't, quite, long enough to go from waist to ankle, but was wide enough to have extra fabric over in the middle after removing the butt and crotch pieces, I added an extra wide waist band. That chunk of extra fabric was wide enough to line up the pattern exactly, so at any distance at all, one won't see that there is even a seam there. So I started sewing the first waist band to the first leg, and left the other pieces spread out over the floor, so I wouldn't loose track of which side was up for the other leg and waist extension, and took my sewing to the next room to be sociable again.

Of course, this was around the time that some people were deciding to head home, so instead of joining folk in the kitchen, I stood, stitching in hand, talking in the entry area, as they got ready to go (and shouted twice "don't step on the sewing project on the floor!" to Keldor and the guy he was showing off all of the swords, spears, and axes that line the living room wall with. (Really, with no one, not even cats, in the room at all, it had felt safe to leave it spread out during the short time I sewed those two pieces together. Nope.)

I got the first two bits sewed together during the time we were doing goodbyes with the first group departing, and started the next set as we hung out with the last couple of folk. After they, too, left, I put down my sewing, and did a bit more tidying up after company (the guests had helped with dishwashing before departing, which was truly appreciated), crawling into bed just after 01:00. As I was setting the dawn light to get up at 06:00 for my fortnightly call with my sisters, Keldor reminded me that it was the night for the change to daylight savings, so we would soon "spring forward" an hour. So I reset the clock on the dawn light to show that it was already 02:00, and went to sleep.

When dawn went off I might have considered sleeping, but Skaði wanted breakfast, so I got up, fed her, and sat down at the computer, where I had a great time catching up with my sisters, sharing my videos with them, and getting some edits for the funding application text, as well as working on my new sewing project and hearing what they are up to.

Then I went back to bed, and slept for three more hours, which was seriously needed, during which time Keldor took this cute photo of Skaði and I:

kareina: (Default)
My normal #1 sewing rule is "Don't sew to a deadline". I find that if my goal for any given sewing project is "I want something to do with my hands right now, and this is pretty and fun to sew" I am happy, and life is low stress.

However...
Together these added up to a very ambitious project: two bliauts, to be worn if we happen to win Nordmark Coronet. Because I am me, (and because of how delicious this fabric feels) I, of course, want to hand-sew them both. All 44 pieces (each) of them.  Alas, we didn't start these soon enough. I only finalized the cutting diagram and started cutting the fabric on 18 July, which was just over two months before the tournament.  

Therefore I started focusing on "what can I do to get them 'wearable' before the date of investiture rather than perfect?" and focused on that.  Therefore, before this weekend, both of them had come this far:
  • body rectangle attached to the skirt gores that are on the side, framing the side slits (6 fabric pieces each for this step)
  • sleeves attached, including the contrasting colour upper arm band (5 fabric pieces each sleeve, so far for mine (there will be another set of three gores added to my upper forearms, later), and 8 each sleeve for his)
  • hemming of all of the above
  • lightweight linen undershirts with extra long, very fitted, sleeves finished enough to wear (though they are on the short side, and could use extending the hems a bit, eventually)
This weekend my beloved took me over to the "dark side", where they have not only cookies, but sewing machines, and I (twitching only slightly) cut and pinned the fabric while he drove a sewing machine (and in-between cutting and pinning, I kept hand-sewing the parts that need it), and now we have added:
  • four sets of skirt gores inset in his bliaut plus two sets of skirt gores inset in my bliaut (each set comprised of 3 triangles), all machine sewn together, and attached to the bliaut such that the machine stitching is on the inside (it was necessary to un-pick the machine sewing several times when I accidentally pinned the gores to the skirts the way I normally do them (with the stitching to the outside, because I prefer to work on the side that is going to be visible later, so that I can make the stitching disappear completely)
  • The points of three of the four sets of his skirt gores have already been hand-finished
  • one set of skirt gores for mine hand sewn and ready to inset into the front, and the three pieces for the second set cut and ready to hand sew and inset
  • one cloth belt, for him cut and ending in rope in the same manner as St George's belt in the above linked photo (I already have a belt for a bliaut)
The event starts Friday of this week. The tournament is on Saturday, the investiture, as per Nordmark tradition, will be that evening.  We won't know if we will need these or not, but "just in case", between now and Saturday evening we need to:
  • hem the all of the new skirt goes 
  • finish the point of his remaining skirt gore
  • finish the points of all four of my skirt gores
Then, if there is still time, I really want to:
  • finish the bottom bit of the seams all around the hem (the middle bits of those seams can be done after the event)
  • cut the fabric for the black band that will go around the hem
  • attach the black band around the hem (this part is is the reason those seams need to be partially finished, so that we can do the first pass of attaching the band by machine, running over the finished part of the skirt seams, then turn it over and sew the second edge by hand
  • attach the black chevron band at the waist
  • add those above mentioned additional sleeve gores to mine
Later, after the event it will still need (and, if we don't win this weekend, there will be plenty of time to complete this list):
  • anything from the above that didn't actually get done by the deadline (hint: when on a time-crunch, focus on making the front side pretty and done, and hope no one notices the back isn't quite there yet if you don't quite manage to get it all done)
  • finishing the remaining seams
  • possibly add decorative embroidery over the black bands
All in all I am enjoying the project, but I think that some of the seam-unpicking that happened yesterday was a direct result of the stress of a looming deadline encouraging me to work too fast, and thus missed seeing that I was sometimes pinning the pieces using autopilot, which is to say, incorrectly in this case. 

However, much though I am enjoying the project, and loving how these are coming out, I still cannot recommend sewing to a deadline. That path leads to the dark side, short-cuts, and unnecessary errors...

kareina: (garden)
I had this week off from LTU because I had planned to head to Double Wars, but it was cancelled. However, I thought I could use the time productively, and get some rest, too, so I kept them as vacation days.

Monday: Acroyoga in the early morning before work, then worked in the archive in the morning, spent an hour in the afternoon helping David with manoeuvring a large rock into place on the terrace edge, an hour in the evening moving the last of the rocks into place for the new frame for the strawberry patch, followed by an hour and a half of sewing whilst doing video call for company, and then 25 minutes yoga with the DownDog app

Tuesday: Went to Storforsen for work (so didn't do acroyoga before work, but did bike to town to meet the others). 15 of us from various departments at the museum went out to inventory the stuff in the various cabins at the Museum of Logging there. (Of course I volunteered when I heard that I could get paid for a trip to one of m favourite places in this area.) In the evening I did a couple of hours sewing and video call.

Wednesday: Acroyoga in the early morning before, then worked in the archive in the morning, spent an hour digging dirt from the pile left over after the landscaping project a couple of summers ago, sifting out the rocks, and spreading the dirt on the bottom layer inside the stone frame.

Thursday: was a holiday, but I still went in for acroyoga in the morning (though we bumped it from 07:00 to 08:00, because holiday), then I relaxed with my computer and food for a couple of hours, and went out to work in the garden at 13:30. First I moved the dirt from the small raised beds near the house to the strawberry patch, then put the five new bags on top, then I extracted the strawberries from the clumps of grass, dirt, and berry plants that I had dug out of the patch on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of this month. Since the clumps had been sitting for almost two weeks the dirt had dried enough to make it fairly easy to separate the berry plants from the grass and everything else and put them back into the strawberry patch on their own. This whole process felt like it took perhaps two or three hours. You can imagine my surprise when I looked at the clock when I finished the task, and it was 21:30, fully eight hours after I started! No, it wasn't dark, yet. That is one thing I love about living in the north--spring planing doesn't happen until after the sun starts staying up late.

Friday (today): Not an official holiday, but I work only four days a week at the archive, and never on a Friday, so it might as well have been a holiday. I started with acroyoga, of course. I had thought to go directly from there to buy some more dirt to re-fill the other planters by the house, but we finished at 09:00, and that store doesn't open till 10:00. So I went home, got some food, and sat to the computer, and didn't manage to move again for a while. Eventually dragged myself out the door around 13:45. By the time I was driving home from buying the dirt I was sleepy, so I lay down on the couch for a bit, and didn't wake for 2.5 hours (I guess that working eight hours in the garden the day before did take some energy, even if it didn't seem so at the time). Then I finally got around to making a new batch of smoothie, having eaten the last of the previous batch early in the week.

This time I used:

- carrot
- spinach
- cucumber
- avocado
- apple
- cantaloupe
- raspberry
- blueberry
- mango
- black currant
- strawberry

Ran them through the food processor (a little at a time), then stirred them together and ran it through the food processor again. This was enough to fill 38 silicon muffin cups and put them in the freezer (the berries and mango were frozen before I started, everything else was fresh, which gave it a good smoothie texture before freezing), which means that this batch should last more than a month, even if there are some days that I eat more than one of them.

Then I did 1 hr and 40 minutes of sewing in a couple of zoom calls.

Tomorrow is Saturday, which hopefully means more gardening or other home improvements plus sewing time.
kareina: (Default)
When the autocrats for the Jungfru Maria Bebådelsedagsgille SCA event, which was scheduled for 20-22 March in the Shire of Reengarda (about an hour or two south of where I live, in Frostheim (depending on which part of the shire you measure to) made the painful decision to cancel the event on account of pandemic, I promptly sent an email to the King and Queen suggesting that perhaps we could do something in the way of an on-line event, pointing out that I would be happy to put on my costume, sit by the computer (or phone) working on a sewing project and still be able to see everyone, and perhaps they could even do court and give out the awards they had planned. They replied that they were looking into this, that I was not the only one with this crazy idea. A couple of days later I was in the right place online at the right time to hear the Kingdom Seneschal say that she wanted a deputy for facilitating official on-line meetings and courts, so I promptly volunteered, as it seemed like the best way to be certain that I would get my SCA fix and get to see my friends.

This meant for a busy couple of weeks, setting up guidelines as to how it will all work, participating in the test-run court so that the Royals and their herald and the court technician would all know how it would work. Getting things set up took long enough that the court was actually held the Saturday after the event was supposed to happen. However, it wasn't like any of us had anywhere else to be, so there were still quite a lot of participants in the meeting. Before the meeting their Majesties decided that for this first try at an on-line court they wanted to keep it small, so invitations were sent only to those 70 people who had registered for the event.

The zoom meeting started out informally, with people able to arrive from 15:45, and it was possible for anyone to speak during that pre-court session. Most people had put on costumes for the occasion, and had a video connection. Some people choose not to put on costumes, and thus left their cameras off, and others simply didn't have a working camera on their end. I was, of course, one of the people in costume, so I connected from my phone, and used my handy phone holder, attached to the arm of the recliner (that I had made to make it easy to sit comfortably, relax and sew during meetings). However, Kjartan and Caroline had chosen not to put on costumes, but they wanted to watch the court on the big screen in the living room, which is wear the recliner is. As soon as he connected his computer to the meeting we got an audible feedback loop from my phone and his computer, so I promptly disconnected my phone audio, but kept my video connection.

When everyone had gathered the Court Technician muted everyone save for the Herald (at his home in Reengarda) and their Majesties (at their home in Gyllengran), and the herald called for all to pay heed to their Majesties, who processed in, and sat down upon their thrones. They then conducted business the same as they would for a normal Drachenwald Court. However, when they called forward someone to receive their award the Court Technician would un-mute that person, so that they could, if they choose to, speak and be heard by the royals and the assembled people.

One of the people to receive an award wasn't present in the meeting when they were called forth, so the herald read the scroll anyway and Their Majesties asked everyone to keep it a secret until they got a chance to tell the recipient themselves. But, presumably, one of their friends contacted the recipient via a personal message, because a short time later they joined the meeting, and were able to receive the award.

Perhaps this means that if it should happen again that someone isn't present at an on-line court that the herald can ask if anyone is able to get in touch with the person and ask them to please join, and go on to the next award? Then, if they still haven't joined by the time the rest of the court business has been conducted the scroll can still be read to make it an official award at the end of court, but if they make it then the herald need only read it one time.

Part way through the court the Court Technician sent me a private message asking about my lack of sound connection. I explained about the feedback loop, and said that if she needed me to say something I could go downstairs. Court had felt like it was drawing to a close, and I was thinking that they might want me to say something during the planned after-court feedback session, in my role as Kingdom Deputy Seneschal responsible for facilitating on-line meetings and courts. She replied with "gärna" (the Swedish phrase used instead of "yes please"), so I picked up my phone and went downstairs. As I was still in the process of sitting down on the floor, and before I could figure out where to set the phone (since downstairs doesn't have a handy phone holder already set up) the Herald called me forward to receive an award. I was so surprised.

If any of you wish to see the court for yourself, it is available here. I just looked at it, and my award falls between 21 and 25 minutes. The first glimpse of me is while I am still sitting down, so the image is moving around a fair bit, and I can see that, not only was I crying tears of joy, I must also have bumped my circlet and veil as I went through the curtains to go downstairs, because they are rather rotated to one side. Oops.

Possibly not my prettiest moment in court, but a happy one. One doesn't expect to be getting arts awards at the Kingdom level when one already has a Laurel. Never mind that, in my case, I got the Laurel without having ever gotten a Kingdom level arts award from any of the (at that point) three Kingdoms I had lived in. I have gotten Kingdom level service awards, for making dance happen, in three of the five Kingdoms in which I have lived, but I moved often enough that I hadn't gotten arts awards above the Baronial level, and wound up jumping straight to the Laurel, about 18 years after I first joined the SCA.

Getting this particular arts award was even more special to me, because they specify that it was my musical contribution to the Kingdom which prompted it. My laurel, which I got in January of 2000, was for hand-sewing and embroidery, or, as I like to say, "for fidgeting". But the place I have always loved best to do that fidgeting is at a bardic circle at events. There is something magical for me to gather in costume with friends as we all raise our voices in song, while some of us work on sewing, or nålbindning, or whatever. I love to sing, but, having grown up with a hearing problem, I was never very good at it, not realising that human voices could (and do) hit specific notes. I just thought that singing was words and timing, and that musical instruments were what did notes.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I found out that I "couldn't sing". My beloved best friend was the one who explained to me that I sang in a monotone, and who started me on the path of learning to move my voice up and down to hit various notes. It was a long and difficult path, and I only really started to make good progress on it years after obtaining hearing aids, which I got for the first time when I was 25 years old (and should have had from childhood). While I have always been good at memorising lyrics and the timing/rhythm for songs, these days, sometimes, and if someone helps me start on the correct note, I can actually sing a song correctly, all the way through. Since moving to Frostheim in 2011 I have also obtained a hammer dulcimer, and have learned to play a few tunes, and I love to bring it to an event to share the beautiful sounds of this instrument.

Perhaps this long explication explains why I was moved to tears by being admitted to the Order of the Panache, for trying to share with my friends something that means so much for me.

the scroll
kareina: (me)
Yesterday I dropped by my friend Wilhelm's for a short visit, and he took a decent portrait of me. This is the first one I have had done since 2008, so it was kinda time to update the icon of "me". What do you think?

After that I went over to Eva's house and we figured out how to correctly attach the sleeves to her dress in the style of 1795. We'd made the pattern some time back, and and I gave her some striped linen for it. Since then she has used her sewing machine to do red embroidery up some of the stripes, which used up an entire kilometer of red thread! At the time we did the pattern I marked where I thought the sleeve seam should intersect with the arm hole based on where mine does. However, her pattern was just different enough from mine, since we are shaped differently, that we needed to rotate the sleeve nearly two cm around, and then it fit nicely.

Today, despite having nine UFO's on my project list (plus however many more languishing in the cupboard without yet having a card on that list), I started a a new project. A sleeveless under tunic from my final large scrap of the yummy white herringbone linen twill, with hopes to have it done before Hostdansen in 12 days. This project brought to life by the inspiration that strikes when one inventories one's fabric stash and discovers that one didn't use up all of the really good stuff on the last undertunic.

Tonight David made it to folk dance, for the first time in ages. It was fun to dance with him again, and fun to dance with everyone else, too.

But as fun as all of that was, the highlight of the weekend has to have been Friday evening, when my friend Villiam called to say "are you inside right now? Yes? Go outside, the northern lights are amazing". And they were, too! We spent several minutes together (about 4 km apart) admiring the heavens dancing and showing off for us. I love living far enough north to get to see such displays now and then. Now, if I remembered to keep my eye on the aurora forecast I could see them more often. One of the guys in our shire posts photos of them regularly to FB, because he loves doing photography, so he checks the forecast often, and it out there pretty much every night they are visible.
kareina: (house)
I have been busy and haven’t made time to post in a while. Before I forget, here is a summary:

Last week Monday I spent two hours on a skype call with my thesis supervisor in Durham. We talked about what sorts of questions they are likely to ask in my interview next month, and how best to respond so that they are left with the feeling that I am perfect for the job. She really is amazing—all this help, and if it works she loses me as a student (but we are likely to be collaborators for the long term), unless we manage to use that cooperation agreement that Bergen and Durham have so that she can be an additional supervisor, but I have no idea if the folk at Bergen have any interest in that at all.

Tuesday I went to Storforsen with Viscountess Caitriona from Oertha. We hadn’t seen one another since my last visit to Oertha (for Kylson’s memorial party) around 15 years ago. She was in town for a wedding of one of her best friends from when she was at University in Fairbanks. There was a small group of Alaskans who had flown over for the wedding, so while she was in Luleå for a full week she was busy doing stuff with the group for almost all of it. It was only the very last day of her trip that I was able to steal her away and spend the afternoon with her. It was delightful to catch up with her, and, of course, Storforsen was as beautiful as it always is. The day was quite warm (high 20’s C), so that the side streams and swimming holes were full of people wading and swimming. We brought bathing suits, so we could have, but she gets cold easily, so decided not to, and I just didn’t feel for changing (and I also get cold easily, though I get hot even easier).

The rest of last week was quite heavily focused on reading from the archaeological literature in preparation for my interview.

Saturday, which was the hottest day of the year so far (temps in the low 30’s C) David and I were outside tearing boards off of the wall of the shed (we were smart enough to wait till the sun was on the far side of that building, so that we were in shade). lots of DYI info and guesses as to the history of the building behind the cut )

Monday morning I woke up inspired to make myself a modern tunic-length shirt by cutting apart and re-assembling a blue collared t-shirt shirt (which was too small for David and so he never wore it) and a black sweater (that I used to wear before it went to the mending closet with holes in the armpits some years back and has languished there ever since). So while David did more progress on the shed wall on his own, I spent the day cutting and fitting and basting. When he went back to the apartment in the evening I was far enough along with the project to start the sewing itself. Since the fabric is knit I couldn’t sew it on the treadle sewing machine, which does only straight seams (which I know from experience will just break if one sews a stretchy fabric and then tries to actually stretch the fabric enough to put it on). I could have borrowed David’s sewing machine, which has lots of different stitch types, many of which are totally suitable for knits, but I hate electric sewing machine sewing, and I figured I could get a prettier result if I sewed it by hand and did the seams with red embroidery to hold them together. So far I have done about 14 hours worth of work on the project (about 10 of which is actually sewing), and I am happy with how it is coming together. If all goes well I might even wind up with something that looks nice enough that I can wear it to an interview.

Tuesday I helped with the shed again—painting tar on the beams before he fastened the boards to it, and then, once all of the boards were attached I painted the wall red. (Sadly, the “Falun Red” paint we have is not quite the same shade of red as the previous owners painted the front wall—the one they used has slightly bluer overtones (and thus is prettier to my eye), while the one we have has slightly orange overtones. However, the colour miss-match is WAY better than the previous, unpainted and not at all weather tight wall, so I am ok with it.) We still need to cut the narrow strips of boards that will be fastened over the seams between the boards (and thus make the wall more weather tight), and then, if there is time left this summer, we can do the same for the back wall (which has huge gaps between the boards wide enough for snow to come into the shed in the winter, and it does). The third wall can wait till next summer.

Today my beloved second apprentice came up from Skellefteå for a visit. We had a yummy lunch (a pie I made by mixing some frozen home made soup of roasted pumpkin and other assorted veg, some beet greens from the garden, some left over lentil (dhal) from yesterday, some yummy Finnish squeeky-cheese (leipajuustuo), canned artichoke, eggs, over which I sprinkled pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds), followed by a yummy strawberry crumble. Then she worked on her belt weaving (ridged heddle) while I worked on my “Frankenstein” tunic (we decided that is a good name for it, since it is assembled out of pieces of other clothing).

I have the rest of this week left of vacation time, and no plans yet, other than keep working on projects and reading.
On Thursday next week I will be taking a train to Norway with folk music friends for the Kalottspel folk music festival, and then I have one more week after that before my interview. So much to read, so much to finish up before then…
kareina: (Default)
On Wednesday Josie was flying in from the Seattle area for a visit. I also had an appointment to go get blood drawn so they would have current numbers on whatever they check for before surgery next week. My appointment was 11:20, and when I was done I still had a full hour before the flight was due to land at 12:45. One hour didn't seem long enough to be worth heading back to the office, so I went to a second hand store on the way to the airport. They were having a 50% off of everything sale, which meant that I paid only 50 SEK for a knee-length button up sweater of purple/grey 100% linen.

Like many modern sweaters it was designed for use by someone who never lifts their arms. Therefore, when I bought it I first double checked that it was wide enough that if I were to cut the upper part down to fit my tiny shoulders and waist that it would leave enough scrap to put in an underarm gore. I wasn't certain if I would bother altering it, or just use it as is.

Josie went to sleep around 19:30, having had a long flight and not so much sleep on the plane. I thought of going to sleep early myself, but then I did a few useful things around then house, then tried on the sweater again, and decided the way the arms attach really is too uncomfortable, and I started taking off the left sleeve. The next thing I knew it was nearly 01:30, and I had nearly completed altering the left side--only the second pass of the long side seam left to do (I was sewing bias tape over the raw edges of the seams to keep it from fraying).

Tonight I went back and finished that, and realized that the rest of the bit I had cut off the sides was big enough to make a pocket (it had none to begin with). So now I am wearing the sweater, with its left half altered, and its right half still original. While typing this is fine--but if I move much then the right side sleeve attachment is annoying. But it is after 01:00, and I am not going to start taking apart that side today. besides, if I leave it then I can get Josie to take some photos by the light of the day to show the difference in before and after.
kareina: (Default)
Saturday morning I got up and shovelled snow, then started sewing the replacement edging onto my phone baldric. Then David and Caroline came over, and while they ate the pizza they brought with them I baked some naan filled with spinach and almonds, then I returned to sewing while they did projects of their own (he in the shop, and she on her computer). Then in the evening I put the sewing down and my friend Max came over. We four chatted for a while, then D&C went to her place and Max and I traded massage.
He helped me shovel snow this morning and went home this afternoon (he lives about an hour south of here), after which I resumed sewing. David came back over and returned to his projects, and eventually he pointed out the time and wondered if I were going to dance
He felt for staying at the house, but lent me his car
dance was fun--10 of us tonight, including a couple of new people who are active in the Luleå Bug and Swing dance group (and thus are already quite good at dancing, so it is just a matter of learning how folk dance differs).
Then home and continued sewing till my audio book ran out (it is really nice that 1) I have gotten good enough in Swedish that I understand audio books now without needing to also see the text at the same time and 2)that my new bluetooth hearing aid adapter plus new hearing aids have such good sound that I can enjoy listening to audio books, for the first time in my life), and I realized that it was late enough that I wasn't going to get the project done tonight. So I got onto the computer to buy the next book in the series (Näckrosdammen is the one I bought today; this is a series I read when I did the Swedish for immigrants course years ago--we read the first one in class, and I checked the others out of the library, and I decided it was time to read them again, but given how busy I am, I opted to listen instead so that I can accomplish more with my reading time.)
and decided to post quickly before I hurry off to bed. Tomorrow I try to figure out what is wrong with the ICP-MS now--the plasma wouldn't start for our PhD student this weekend, and gave her a "bad vacuum error", which doesn't sound good.
kareina: (Default)
Monday I was in the office from 08:15 to 14:15, and at the ore geology seminar from 15:00 to 17:00, did the Phire bbq in the evening, then stayed up till just after midnight.

Tuesday I was in the office from 07:55 to 16:25 and then went to Phire practice followed by choir, then went home and did uni work for a couple of hours, getting to bed about 01:30. Phire was extra fun—the first “open training” of the new term, and we had some new students, one of whom is a gymnast, so she was pretty quick to learn some of the acroyoga stuff. She will have a bit of a learning curve in how to balance on a shaky base, but she has the strength to do the poses. Choir was also fun because there were 20 of us. How nice to have a decent number of people again. Hope it lasts.

Wednesday I was in the office from 08:00 to 16:40, then went to the Phire parkour and aerial silks training (one of the new students has done areial silks before, so we were comparing notes—we are both beginners, but know different stuff), followed by Herrksapsdans class (always fun!), and then flaffled around on line, getting to bed a bit before 01:00

This morning (Thursday), I didn’t make it to the office till 08:30, and by 11:00 I was feeling like I was coming down with a bit of a cold, so I went home and slept for four hours, getting up on time to eat a little something before heading in to the Frostheim meeting on campus (the original plan had been to just stay at work being productive till the meeting). At the meeting I started cutting out another linen underlayer like the one I did for my jester costume, only longer this time. The other one is really comfortable in that it is nicely supportive (being laced up rather tightly across the chest), and since I adapted the Eura dress pattern it moves well—I can stand on my hands without the fabric at the waist moving at all. This new one will be even better as it is a much nicer linen (the jester group ordered some pretty cheap/coarse linen for our jester costumes) that I found for sale at the folk costume table at Spelmansstamman the summer before last. It will also be almost knee length (the other one goes just to my bottom, for easier acroyoga), and so will be a better under layer for my tunics. I also plan to fit it all the way to my waist. The short one is fitted to half way down the ribs, and then the hip gores start already. I think it will be even more comfortable to fit it to the bottom of my ribs, and then start the side gores. No idea when I will have time to sew it though. I would love to have it ready to wear already next weekend at the Gyllengran event, but I don’t know that I can spare the sewing time. Indeed, it is a shame didn’t work today though, I have a grant proposal that needs progress and some data reduction to do.

However, the long nap must have helped, as I don’t feel any worse than I did this afternoon, so, with luck, I will be spared being really sick.
kareina: (acroyoga)
I normally work from home on Fridays (and not at all on LTU stuff). When I went to bed last night I was already up over 23 hours for LTU work this week, so I didn’t need to do any more LTU stuff for me. However, one of our PhD students was doing her defense today, so, of course, I went in for that. Two weeks ago I had been asked by a colleague in one of the other divisions of our department if I would present the laser lab to some visitors today at 10:00, to which I replied that A. had her defense at that time, to which he replied that, of course, he meant to go to the defense himself, so how about 12:00 instead, and I agreed. Some days later he wrote back to say that plans had changed, and he would be taking the visitors to a variety of labs starting at 13:00 instead, and so could be at my lab between then and 13:30, and was that ok? I forgot to change the calendar entry.

This meant that today I came in at 08:30 and had time to send two emails before the defence started at 9:00 (it having been pushed an hour earlier), during which I made some good progress on my viking coat in progress (nearly done with the second pass of sewing on the seams, leaving just cutting the neck and sewing on the tablet weaving and the decorative (and reinforcing) seam embroidery). After she finished speaking I and a colleague spent perhaps half an hour more chatting to one another about work, and then I returned to my office, where I worked on data reduction for the initial test soapstone analyses I had done some week back but haven’t had a chance to look at. Just before 12:00 I went downstairs, taking the computer with me, and opened an old power point presentation introducing the lab, then returned to the data reduction in progress while I waited. A bit after 12:00 I opened email on my phone (my computer doesn’t seem to know my password for the uni wifi network, even though my phone does, and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it, since I normally have a wire, but the lab doesn’t have a spare wire) and saw the message saying 13:00 instead of 12:00.

I didn’t feel like carrying the computer back upstairs, so I kept working where I was, ignoring the sound of the lab machines. About 13:27 my colleague called to say that since they had gone over time on some of the lab visits that they were going to have to miss mine, so I went back to my office and got in a tiny bit more data processing till the 14:00 gathering in the ficka room, where they announced that she had passed her defence and we ate cake (I had a larger piece than I should have, because cream! So much cream on that cake that I called it 45% dairy in my food log.) After spending the better part of an hour chatting with colleagues I returned to my office and got a bit more work done with the data reduction, till my alarm went off to tell me to head to Phire practice, where Johan and I would do acroyoga. (I am now at 6 hours of Durham work, and 26 of LTU work for the week. With luck I will be able to bring Durham up to a more reasonable hour before the weekend is over.)

Acroyoga, as always, was much fun. In the past 7 weeks we have seen some serious improvement. His flexibility has improved so much that he is now able to reach his toes in a seated forward bend (at least when I am sitting with my foot pressed against his, and we hold hands and pull one another into the stretch) and the shaking in his legs when he bases is mostly gone, but his arms still shake when doing head stands (but he can now hold a headstand, and is starting to manage handstands). Today we tried doing the roll over during the Jedi box for the first time. It is much harder than it looks to actually sit back up after turning over like that. I don’t think we can claim to have managed that part yet. On the other hand, without the rolling over it is getting pretty easy, even for me to base, so long as he remembers not to bend his arms or legs (which results in collapse). After an hour of acroyoga we set up the aerial silks and played with them. Since we were already well warmed up I was able to climb to the top on my first try. I am also pleased to report that the ankle that I twisted on May 16 is now so much recovered that I was able to climb the silks without it hurting, and it didn’t bother me at all during acroyoga.

After our session I realized that I really should have thought a bit before promising Ellinor, who dropped off the silks at the start of practice, but then went on to study for tomorrow’s exam, that I would take the silks home and return them to her tomorrow when we picked her up for the music session. This meant that I had with me my work computer (since I want to finish that data reduction this weekend), my viking coat in progress (which is enough to fill the basket on my trike all by itself), the rolling suitcase the silks live in, my lunch bag, and my glasses case. I managed to get it to fit onto the trike by putting the coat into the basket, the lunch bag into the suitcase, the suitcase balanced across the top of the basket and tied into place with my bike lock. Then I sat down on the trike and put the computer on my lap and started heading home. I quickly realised that it would be a very unpleasant journey that way, so instead of heading home I went to Caroline’s apartment and left the silks and their suitcase there, which meant that there was room for both the computer and the sewing project in my basket, and the ride home was much nicer. This means that David and Caroline will bring the silks with them tomorrow.

He plans on coming here in the morning to work on the sun shade modifications, and when Ellinor is out of her exam we will pick her up and head to Birger and Siv’s house for their annual “spelträff” (folk music gathering) for a couple of hours. We usually spend the whole afternoon, but this year we don’t feel like we can spare that much time, given what all we want done before we head to Cudgel War next month.

After we got home I was inspired to bake some oven pancakes, as I am running low of the last batch in the freezer, and I had bought milk for it last weekend, so it seemed like a good time to use it. Normally when I bake Swedish Oven Pancakes I forget to write down (or even notice) how much flour I use; I just keep adding it till there is “enough”. But today I paid attention:

1 litre of milk
6 eggs (medium)
a dash of salt
1 cup almond meal
2 cups oat flour
3 cups wheat flour

Whisk together the milk, eggs, and salt. Add the flours, one cup at a time, and whisk well after each addition. Pour into a well-buttered large shallow baking pan (mine measures 35 x 42 cm) and bake at 150 C (fan on) for 25 to 35 minutes (I prefer it to be just starting to turn golden when I rescue it from the oven, but David likes it actually crossing over to a light brown).

There is a huge variety of proportions that works for these. It can be done with fewer (or more) eggs, even only one egg if you prefer (you could probably even leave out the egg and it would still work). One can use more varieties of flour, or only one type. Since it isn’t meant to rise one can be quite flexible with which type of flour(s) one uses. I have done them gluten-free by using rice flour. I have done them dairy-free by using almond milk (ok, the one time I did it, it was both gluten-free and dairy-free, but I was generous with the eggs). One can make the batter fairly runny or fairly thick; it only changes how long it takes to solidify in the oven and modifies the flavour a bit as one or another ingredient becomes dominant. They are good if one mixes into the batter a bunch of grated carrot, or other vegetables, or minced or chopped meat, or chopped nuts, or saffron, or really anything you like tossed in. The traditional Swedish version is just wheat flour, lots of milk, and some egg (+ salt), baked and served with butter and lingon jam (or raspberry jam, especially if saffron was included in the pancake). The freeze well, and make excellent road food, since they are good eaten cold, and they are solid enough to handle travel.
kareina: (house)
My car’s ABS warning light had been shining for a while, so I finally made time to take it in and have it looked at last week Monday. They found some problems, kept it over night, fixed them, and I paid them not quite 6000 SEK for doing so. Yesterday (Wednesday) another warning lamp came on, this time saying “check break pads”. Since I will be heading to Norway for a week, leaving on Saturday, I promptly took the car back to the shop this morning and asked them to have a look, as one wants working breaks for a road trip, especially one which will involve mountains. An hour or so later they emailed me to say that they found more problems (I can’t be bothered translating from Swedish), and it would be ~5000 SEK to get it fixed, but I could have it back tomorrow. Here’s hoping that this really does it for a while.

Since I didn’t know when I left the house this morning how long they would need to keep the car I was smart enough to bring along my sewing basket. I then spent all day in the office (other than the lunch time acroyoga session with Johan) till it was time for the Frostheim crafts night, then I walked over. We have only been doing them once a month this term, and tonight was an espeically nice turn out—we had 11 of us, many of whom were working on sewing projects, others had nålbinding, another was doing illumination, another polished some wire for making spirals for a Finnish Iron Age costume. It was a delightful evening.

Now I am tired and should go do my yoga and get to sleep. I will be working in the office tomorrow morning and then meeting Johan for acroyoga, and then will work more in the office till the car place says I can come get it.
kareina: (Default)
 Today I have battled the stupidity of modern clothing--I have been altering a pair of flannel pajamas purchased while visiting in the UK (where houses are neither as well insulated nor as well heated as in Sweden). The pajama top started out with:

* sleeves the correct length
* about the correct diameter of fabric around the hips
* way too much fabric around the waist
* shoulder seams that fell partway down my arms
* sleeves too big around the upper arm
* sleeves that wouldn't permit me to lift my arms without the entire top needing to lift as well. 

Solution:

* cut off the sleeves
* cut the body fabric into a rectangle only as wide as my shoulders
* cut the extra fabric from the sides into triangles from hip to waist, and rectangle from waist to underarm
* sew those side gores to the body rectangles
* make underarm gores from the fabric that was left over after making side gores
* cut the sleeves into rectangles
* use the fabric left over from the sleeves to extend the top of the sleeves (so that they will still be the correct length, despite moving the should seam
* sew the sleeves and under arm gores back on to the body.

Result:

A top that fits well, and permits me to raise my hands over my head without moving any of the body fabric.

I have spent five hours on this project so far, and I still have the second sleeve and sleeve gores to attach. However, I am content to put that bit off till tomorrow. I will never understand why clothing manufacturers do those stupid curved sleeve arms that make it impossible to raise one's arm without getting a cold tummy, when underarm gores are so easy to do...

kareina: (Default)
Tonight I managed to finally get started on the embroidery for the sleeves on the 12th century dress I started six month ago on the lovely 3-in-1 wool twill I bought at the last Medieval Week I attended. The neck embroidery is done, but since it took six months to accomplish just the neck, doing the sleeves are likely to take a rather long time.

Today was the first Ore Geology Seminar for the year at LTU. This is a new thing we are starting, and the hope was that it would be a good place for our PhD students and researchers to share their work in progress and get good ideas. So far so good--today's presentation was on a structural geology regional research project here in Norrbotten. He showed pictures of some troublesome thin sections. While most of the samples from the area have kinematic indicators with one sense of shear direction, a few of the ones with K-feldspar porphyroblasts show the opposite direction. He noted that, in the case of the ones which show the opposite sense of movement that the pressure shadows are very weakly developed, and perhaps he can discount these as not being a very good reflection of the deformational system. This prompted another of us to point out that he could send the samples to the really good SEM with EDS down south and they can measure the C-axis orientation, which could help answer the question as to the true sense of shear. Several of us now sound rather interested in using this technology...

And, finally, the reason I am posting tonight after Nyckelharpa, when I should have already done my yoga and gone to bed. Week 8's summary of how I spent my hours (now that week 9 has started):

Goal:  56 25 20 20 20 15 10 2
  sleep useful tasks Durham LTU social exercise entertainment make music
Week 1 48 40 0 13 37 15 14 0
Week 2 56 38 20 14 20 7 15 0
Week 3 52 25 11 24 37 12 6 0
Week 4 54 25 44 1 25 10 10 0
Week 5 53 28 38 1 22 11 14 0
Week 6 52 38 9 22 16 17 13 0
Week 7 51 29 8 17 23 19 22 0
Week 8 50 35 9 23 30 11 10 1
 

I managed to get LTU back on track after week 7's downturn, but my Durham work suffered (five of those nine hours were accomplished on Sunday, after deciding to start sharing my totals).  If I hadn't exceeded my social goal by 10 hours, and had put that energy into working on my thesis instead.  It would also have been good to use those extra five hours of useful task time to work out a bit more. But at least I finally did a bit of music--singing in Choir. Now if I would just tune my poor dulcimer, which has been sitting neglected all year--I have only touched it to show it off to visitors, and then with an apology that it has been too long since it was last tuned (even I can hear that it is off, which is saying something).

kareina: (Default)
* caught up on sleep (10 hours last night!)

* cleaned out the ick & hair balls from under the bathroom sink, and then managed to get the plumbing put back together again correctly (the latter was harder than I remember it being last time, something about doing this only once a year or so...)

* two loads of laundry

* choose a new book to read in Swedish and listen to in Audio book at the same time and started doing so

* made a yummy fruit salad

* finished cutting down the too-big half-round foam block to a better size and sewed the top and side foam to the stack of filling foam. (I still need to sew on the bottom foam and make a new, smaller cloth cover for it. I haven't decided if I will just start over with a whole new cover, or cut down the too big one.) I have tested it, it works much better for rolling over from the handstand to standing than did the too big version, though I don't want to play with it much till I get it covered in cloth--the stitches through the foam are too easy to tear out, foam being so foamy.

* visited with a couple of friends on line

Now I need to clean up the foam scrap from the living room, do yoga, and get to bed. Tomorrow evening Linda will arrive for a visit, I am really looking forward to seeing her. I hope I can talk her into doing some acroyoga with me.
kareina: (Default)
When I started work on the half-round gymnastics matt/block project the goal was a finished product that stands 72 cm high, and has a base that is 90 x 60 cm. I started the work by making the side pieces 90 cm wide, 72 cm tall, and with a reasonable curve from the peak to the sides. Then I started sewing a 60 cm wide foam over the top of the curve, to make a shell. Once I had the shell together I saw that the pile of foam we had wasn't big enough, so today I went and bought 2 more cheap foam mattresses that measure 200 cm by 90 cm (I thought one might be enough, but it might not, so I grabbed the spare).

Today I managed to finish assembling the bits, measured the base and saw that I needed rectangles 90 x 55 cm to fit inside the two layers thick of the camping mat frame from which I have done the shell, so I cut them and determined that I did, in fact, need some, but not all, of the second mat. I put them into place, set the one last bit of camping matt foam over it, sewed it shut, pulled the fabric shell over all, and pinned it shut, and started sewing it shut. Then I decided to give the matt a try, and was surprised to discover that it is too big, that when I do the fall over it from the handstand I wind up perched on top, rather than having my feet come to the other side.

So I grabbed the meter stick and checked it, and discovered that I had wound up with something that was 95 x 75 x 60 cm. In other words, too big by the layer of foam I wrapped around the sides. I forgot that I would need to subtract those from the sides, since I wanted the sides sitting under the top curve, to give it better support.

Sigh. So I have started taking it back apart, so that I can make it smaller. But if it is worth doing, it is worth doing over correctly if one makes such an easily avoidable mistake. Luckily, I have also learned a few other things doing this project, and I think it will be an overall better result from having to do it over. But, darn it, I wanted to be able to play with it already, and to have the sewing mess cleaned up before house guests arrive on boxing day. Now I am not so certain I will accomplish that goal, since I plan to go visiting tomorrow, and this is not a good take-with sewing project.
kareina: (Default)
One of my favourite toys from the gymnastics class is the large half-round block/mat. I am very fond of doing a handstand in front of it, then letting myself fall onto it and roll over it into a standing position. I can also go the other way--do a back-bed over it, then lift my legs up and over to the floor on the other side and stand up. I have wanted one at home, but the large size, which is what we have at Lulegymnasterna, sells for 5,850 SEK new (about $700 US or €590), which is more than I care to pay. Therefore I have decided to try to make one.

A couple of years ago we bought a cheap foam mattress and cut it up to fill duct-tape dress dummies, doing one for our friend Linda, and one for David. The remaining foam from that project we left in the cloth cover that the mattress, since it has a handy zipper. Some time later the duct tape from Linda's died, so we put the foam chunks back into the bag of foam and tossed the tape. The bag of foam has been sitting in the boiler room ever since, with bits being taken out now and then for projects. Therefore I decided that it would be a good base for this new project, and did the measurements. Sure enough, to make a half-round block/mat of my own in the large size (base of 90 x 60 cm, height of 75 cm) that cotton cover of the old mattress was just big enough to do the sides and main body, but not the base. So I cut the fabric, and also cut another piece of fabric from the fabric scrap drawer for the base, and took them all to the store yesterday, where I bought four cheap thin foam camping mats to form the basic shape of the block. Those mats happened to come exactly 60 cm wide, which is perfect for the main body.

Last night and part of today I worked on assembling the foam shell, sewing the half-round sides to the central bit using some heavy cotton yarn and a blanket stitch. I have also sewn the fabric for the top and the sides together. Now that I have that much assembled, I see that our pile of foam isn't big enough to fill it, and the block needs to packed fairly tightly full of foam, so that it will support me when I do that roll over the top of it. Sadly, I got to this stage at 20:00, which is when the store, from which we bought the last cheap foam mattress from years ago, closes. So I guess I will be heading out to the store in the morning.

Left to do on this project: obtain enough foam to fill the shell, fill the shell and pack it tightly, sew the fabric base on (by hand, I think). Test it. Wish me luck that it works as I think it should. And that one more mattress is enough foam (we do still have the foam from David's duct-tape dress dummy, which he says I can use, if needed. I doubt that he is the same size as when we made that one, anyway).
kareina: (Default)
This morning I was motivated to start a new modern sewing project. I think I mentioned some time back that I had finally gotten around to cutting open the front of a modern sweater and putting in a zipper as it was a great weight for a summer/autumn jacket, but that it was still too big, and I ought to alter it. Today I finally did. It was another of those stupid modern shirts where the arms are not designed to be raised, and it was too big around for me, which meant that the sleeves hung just a bit too long. So I marked where the edge of my shoulders hit the sweater and cut straight down from there, giving me a central body rectangle (with a zipper in it for the front part). Then I cut the sleeves off of the bit that had been between them and the body rectangle. Then I cut the bottom of that bit into a triangle which I sewed to the body rectangles as gores from hips to waist, and the part that was left I sewed the straight bits together (that had been next to the body rectangle before being cut off), then trimmed the other edges to make that part a more symmetrical diamond shape, which I sewed in as under-arm gores that fill in the arm pit where the sleeves used to have a weird curved attachment to the body, making it hard to raise one's arms, and extending down from there to the waist. Actually, it was long enough to go past the waist, so I opted to leave both sets of gores as long as they could be, and they go past one other at the waist. The result is quite comfortable. This all took 6.6 hours of my day, not counting various food breaks.

When I was done I re-arranged the office furniture, which makes me happy. I love re-arranging furniture. However, David may not be so pleased, since he wasn't here to discuss my plans and had no input. However, he and Caroline dropped by today so he could work on a project in the shop and she could get some more things to take to the apartment, and even though they were here a couple of hours, he didn't make time to talk with me. I asked him to join me when I sat down to eat during a sewing break, but he didn't want any of the apple-nectarine cobbler I had baked*, so I suggested he sit down and talk with me while he ate, but he wandered off to do something else instead, so I returned to my sewing, and a short bit later they shouted from the door that they were leaving. If he didn't want to make time to talk, then he had better not be bothered when he notices I moved his desk without asking first. (I am fairly certain he will be ok with it.)

Tomorrow I hope to pick more berries, even if it is still raining (it has been since yesterday), but it all depends on how healthy I am feeling. I haven't gotten any sicker, but I still have that hint of soreness in my throat if I swallow. I also have another issue I have forgotten to mention--my left index finger has kinda swollen and hurting at the base if I try to do anything with it since Thursday evening, and I have no idea why. I didn't bump it, it has no cuts to be infected, I wasn't even doing anything that used it that evening--I was at the computer, but mostly reading instead of typing. Oh well, if it is still bothering me on Wednesday when I see my physical therapist I can ask about that, too.

*I had thought to make a fruit salad, but the nectarines were so insipid that I figured the only way to make them palatable was to bake them with the tart apples, a bit of sugar, and a topping of oats, walnuts, butter, yoghurt, and more sugar. No, UI didn't make it sweet, but I figured it needed a little to do something about the poor nectarines, who were picked before their time and sent who knows how far around the world to languish in the fridge till I noticed we had them. It worked, they were much tastier after baking and adding other yummy stuff to them.
kareina: (Default)
Still feeling not entirely healthy, though also not really showing much in the way of symptoms, either (slight hint of discomfort in my throat if I swallow, but other than that nothing). With luck I will just get over it without ever feeling worse, but to be certain, I have taken it easy today.

Project #1 was making a template for decorating my hammer dulcimer. I think I have mentioned before that in an attempt to learn to read music I am trying to colour-code it (A=red, B=purple, C=blue, D=green, E=yellow, F=orange, G=brown). At first I was doing the colouring of the music in a drawing program, but it turns out that the uni printers are calibrated way too differently from my monitor, so that the colours which are easy to distinguish on the screen are hard to tell apart when printed (especially the brown-purple-blue-green and the red-orange). Therefore I have given up on that and am instead just using colour pencils to write on printouts of the sheet music. I had had little coloured dots, printed from the computer, that I glued down to the bridges of the dulcimer, but the quality of glue stick is variable, and some dots were coming off, and see above about the difficulties in telling the colours apart. I could mostly manage anyway, since I know the sequence, so the one just above the yellow has to be the orange, but that sequence of several in a row that look nearly the same makes it harder.

Therefore I have decided to invest in some paint and do decorative little swirly bits on the bridges in the colours, and, while I am at it, make the ones that are sharp or flat look different from the ones that are natural. The first step was to order the paint. The other day I checked the Swedish art supply store that David orders from, and noticed they had some sets of acrylic paint, but none of them seemed to contain all of the colours I needed. Therefore I sent them an email explaining what I wanted, and why it was important to be able to tell the colours apart, and could they recommend to me which sets and/or individual colours I should order? I wrote in English, but included a sentence in Swedish at the end saying they were welcome to reply in Swedish if they like, as I have no problems reading it. Not much more than 24 hours later I got a reply, in English (the writer confessed that it is his native language) stating that since none of their sets actually contains purple, I would be better off ordering individual colours, and he gave me the list of product numbers to get the full set I need. As soon as I placed my order I also filled in their contact form thanking them for awesome customer service, and naming the guy who had written.

Since the paint has been ordered, it was time to decide exactly what I will be doing with the paint, so opened up an old drawing of my dulcimer, with strings labeled as to which is which, and added a new layer to actually draw the bridges (which I measured). Then I added another layer to design the swirly bits to paint onto the bridges, and coloured them on screen to see how it would look. I decided to go with making the sharps and flats have only a thin line connecting the top and bottom swirls, but the naturals have a wide bit in the middle, too. Easy to tell them apart, but not distracting, either.

Then I printed a black and white version of the bridges and swirls, coloured them in with my coloured pencils (which I can easily tell apart), and tried sliding them under the strings and onto the bridges. It turns out that my spacing of the bridges wasn't quite right, so I needed to print and colour a couple of times before I managed to have a perfectly sized strip to label the strings (I also had to scrape away the remaining old glued on dots). I have tried playing from sheet music with these swirls under the strings, and it works. It will look much better when I have replaced that paper with the painted swirls, though I am not looking forward to having to loosen all of the strings enough to push them off of the bridges to do the painting and then tightening them again to the correct note. I will need to do them only a few at a time, I think.

Once that was done I spent an hour curled up on the couch reading, took a nap, read some more, and then was inspired to do a long-procrastinated project. Back in about 1989 or so my then-boyfriend, George, had a pair of wool dress trouser that he didn't want any more (shrunk in the wash? wearing out? tired of them? I don't recall why, but he gave them to me). They were much too big in the waist (even in those days, when I was much chubbier than I am today), but with a safety pin to hold them on they did just fine as a layer over silk or wool tights for cross country skiing. I have used them for many years, and over time the fabric in the crotch wore thin and then gone. At some point, years ago, I kinda patched them from the inside with scraps of some other wool, but that wasn't working so well anymore, since the holes had grown. They got stuck into the mending closet some unknown amount of time back, and largely forgotten.

Till late this summer, when I wanted something to wear on my legs while working outside on a cool, rainy day. Then I remembered them, checked my clothes cupboard and couldn't find them, checked the mending cupboard, and there they were. Still too big, still with holes in the crotch, but over wool tights they were just fine for working outside in not so nice weather. This time as I overlapped the waist huge amounts before pinning them on it occurred to me that it might be possible to cut away fabric from the inside of the thighs to get rid of the holes and take them in to actually fit.

Today I remembered that, and thought I would give it a try. Sure enough, looking closely at the legs, the damage was concentrated in the crotch such that a straight line up the back of the leg, from the ankel to the waist would just miss the damaged area, and the part below the holes, but between that line and the original inner leg seam looked wide enough to make some triangle gores for the crotch. So I gave it a try, and three hours later I have a pair of trousers that fit. I might have liked the thighs to be a little looser, but that wasn't possible given the fabric I was starting with, and they aren't exactly tight. Much to my delight I was able to do the entire project on the treadle sewing machine. I had expected that I wouldn't be able to do the second pass of the flat-fled seams on the legs, but I managed it.

Thinking that I couldn't do the finishing of the legs, I decided to try part of it anyway, to reduce the amount of hand-sewing that would be needed, so I first finished the back seam from the waist to the crotch (I didn't do anything to the front seam--it still has the original zipper), then sewed shut both legs, the opened it up and, starting from mid-upper thigh, started finishing that flat-felled seam, expecting that I would be able to manage from there, across the crotch, and down to about the same spot on the other leg.

However when I reached that point I realized that I could managed to crumple up the fabric behind the sewing machine foot and smooth out the fabric in the path of the seam and do another couple of cm more. Then I realized I could smooth out the next 2 cm, and so on, right down to the ankel. Since that worked, I returned to the other leg, and gave it a try from the ankel up, and sure enough managed to smooth out and fold under about 2 cm of seam at a time till I reached the part that I had already done. This won't be at all surprising to those of you who sew by machine regularly, but for so many years I sewed only Medieval costumes, and then only by hand, so I didn't think I would manage.

Now it is 22:25, so I should go to my yoga, take another hot shower, and get some sleep.
kareina: (Default)
Last night I tried sewing a single garnet bead in the center of a square on the beautiful 3-in-1 wool twill fabric. Today I decided that I hadn't managed to get it perfectly centered, and that the only way to do that would be to baste diagonal lines from point to point on all the squares, and while I was at it, around the outline of the neck facing.

Luckily for me, today at work my Master's student wanted to try driving the laser for this, her final lab session of her project, so I got to spend several hours basting lines while she did all the data collecting, and I only needed to remind her which task needed to happen when, and how.

lines basted

close up

Now the neckline is ready for beads (which will be *much* easier to center in those squares now that there is an X to mark the spot), and, while I am at it, some red embroidery around the beads, since I have remembered some lovely wool yarn that is the same colour as the garnets. I have also done the math and worked out that I have exactly enough of the white to edge the sleeves, hem and neck of the tunic I want to do. Looking forward to making progress on this project while on the Norway trip this weekend. There is enough embroidery and beading to do that I need bring only the white fabric, yarn, and beads. The blue can stay home and wait till the trim is ready to attach.

Now to finish packing, do my yoga, get a shower, and then leave for the bus in 7.5 hours. Plenty of time...

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